bipolar disorder

On April 13th, 2010, it was announced to the public that Catherine Zeta-Jones had recently undergone treatment in a mental health facility in Connecticut, treatment for Bipolar II disorder. Every news cast and article I’ve read recommends medications and psychotherapy.

But the therapy that has been consistently recommended is not psychotherapy as I know it. It’s today’s version of “psychotherapy” which is about managing the symptoms behaviorally and cognitively. Things like understanding and recognizing the triggers for the symptoms, making preventative changes, and tweaking the person’s medication. There is nothing wrong with these things as steps, but only as steps and only as truly needed. But these are being recommended as the therapy.

This is a version of psychotherapy that has taken the soul out of the psychotherapy I know, honor, and love. Psychotherapy is soul work at its best, at its deepest, at heart. What “psychotherapy” has become in our world today is the result of politics (by pharmaceuticals, by “managed care” health insurance, by a system whose goal is the “quick fix” to get you up and working and “functional” as quickly as possible) . . . and repeated blatant and insidious attacks from many quarters in our society on true psychotherapy, true healing, people truly knowing themselves, what happened to them long, long ago, and what still lives within them calling to be healed, calling to be birthed into being, calling to be fulfilled.

Some days ago I heard a well known medical correspondent say that curing it was probably going too far. In other words, there was not a likelihood of cure for Catherine Zeta-Jones, for people with Bipolar Disorder II.

And so I want to let you know, Catherine . . . if you choose to simply take medication and adjust your lifestyle, that is your choice. But you definitely have other choices. It is possible for you, if you are willing to make the commitment and do the inner exploration and healing . . . it is possible for you to heal what you are suffering from to the roots that live within you.

And that which is possible for you, will also make so much more possible for your children. And that which is possible for you, is possible for others, too.

Don’t settle for the limitations that today’s psychotherapists, drug companies, and media people settle for. If therapists do not do their own work to heal the roots of their own wounds, those therapists cannot possibly help others do the inner work to heal to the roots of their wounds.